Slice, dice and mince it up

Microsoft is reining in several of its products following the company's second round of lay-offs that kicked off on Tuesday.

The software giant isn't killing any products yet, instead it is scaling back its commitment to .Net Micro Framework, MSN Direct Service and its ResponsePoint phone system after letting go of 3,000 staff earlier this week.

Redmond launched its second wave job cuts following the decision in January to let go of 1,400 people after it reported disappointing quarterly results. Around 5,000 employees in total are expected to see the axe fall at Microsoft.

The vendor plans to continue to punt and support its current ResponsePoint phone system, but it is also mulling whether it's worth bringing a newer version of the app into the small biz market.

Similarly, MSN Direct - which provides weather, traffic and other services to devices such as in-car map systems - is also under review.

Meanwhile, the business model for the .NET Micro Framework will be changed. Microsoft will kill off royalties from the distribution of the product and it will become a community-supported project instead. Source code will be made available to the community, which will support new customers of the product.

Microsoft also cut around 30 per cent of its staff at in-game ad unit Massive on Tuesday. ®